The Gift of Doubt in My Life

by Rev. Paul Herrington

I HAD rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind. And therefore, God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

               ~Francis Bacon “Of atheism” (1612 rewritten 1625)*
               
Of all the things I knew when I was 19, which was most of the things there are to know, I knew church was neither fun nor hip. Of all the things I know today at 29, which is strangely far fewer than the number of things I professed to know at 19, I know my mind is inclined towards God. Understanding how the atheist-inclined 19-year-old becomes a 29-year-old Baptist minister and therapist is a study in the positive effects of doubt in a young person’s spiritual journey. The quote above came to me in a Modern Philosophy course and has served as the elevator version of my spiritual autobiography, which I have been invited to share here as a part of this important edition of God & Nature magazine.

I was raised a Christian and baptized at 12 years old. At that age I was only marginally aware that my public declaration of faith in Jesus represented the beginning of my spiritual story. My religious inheritance was moderate, meaning beliefs such as the inerrancy of scripture, a literal 7 day creation, and the like were not common in the churches of my youth. As an adolescent, I had a mixture of Christian and non-Christian friends, but never really enjoyed the youth groups I floated through. My questions about faith were far from atheistic in those days. I remember my primary curiosities revolved around issues of meaning, interpretation, and apparent contradictions in scripture.

If memory serves me, I was not a typical youth group member and felt especially uncomfortable in the two youth camps I attended as a teen. I recall a moment at one Christian camp in Panama City (go figure!) when, looking around the hotel ballroom where daily worship took place, I felt fearful and alienated from my peers who were all engaged in dramatic praiseful gestures, tears, and euphoria during the playing of a contemporary Christian rock song. My fear and alienation was caused by the fact that the trance state that had completely engulfed the young Christians in the room wasn’t working on me. Was I really a Christian if I couldn’t experience faith in the same ways my peers did? Was there something wrong with my belief? That frightening and lonely moment made me determined to find another group, perhaps one more accommodating of my questions. I wanted friends and I didn’t want to leave the church, but it didn’t feel right to stay if I wasn’t feeling it like my peers. I felt like a fraud at times. At other times I felt like the only clear headed person in the basement youth hangout.

Doubt ensued, but it was not some devil or my flawed human nature that created my doubt. I believe this doubt was a gift from the Holy Spirit in the form of permission to question, to engage and develop my mind as a powerful ally to a deeper kind of faith. After all, if I was made in the image of God, surely this natural inclination that developed at 17 or 18 could reflect something of God’s wisdom?

Shortly thereafter, I inadvertently went away to college at the most liberal and least religious school in my college guidebooks. A small liberal arts college, Grinnell, in the middle of rural Iowa was the crucible of my faith, as wildly new and at times painfully different viewpoints were presented to me in my philosophy and history courses. People spoke of the church with disdain or in past tense, like an artifact of bygone millennia. My faith was challenged by my first try at philosophy and my mind became inclined towards atheism. Postmodernity, existentialism, and my zealously atheistic peer group helped me see one set of answers to many of the questions I had previously had. Getting into Grinnell, a very tough school, had been one of the big accomplishments of my life to that point; so when my highly intelligent peers and professors were unwavering in their confidence that Christianity was at best unnecessary and at worst a scourge, I doubted everything I’d come to believe and worked so hard to understand as a youth.

The natural conclusion then was to become one of them, and for a while I walked a path I hoped was away from God and especially the moderate Baptist churches I once attended. I was overjoyed by my discovery of philosophy and it was my understanding that philosophical enlightenment of a postmodern variety was incompatible with Christian faith.

Then life happened. As a sophomore I experienced acute symptoms of a mood disorder I would later be told was Bipolar II. It was the darkest, longest, loneliest part of my life thus far and it happened out there in the cornfields. As my symptoms worsened, my cognitive abilities diminished and were replaced with circular thinking and rapid pressured speech. Doing philosophy was basically impossible and my new replacement religion failed to provide me with sufficient justification to even get out of bed. It got worse before it got better. I heard a miraculous Sufjan Stevens cover of Amazing Grace one dark lonely night that probably saved my life.

I came back to my roots, back home to my folks and once I was stabilized (which took several months) I felt somewhat rehabilitated, but in need of redemption and resurrection. I enrolled at a historically Catholic college in my hometown and took my first theology course. That class showed me how to read and think systematically and critically about Christian doctrine, tradition, and scripture. My questions proliferated more rapidly than I was able to discern answers, and I was okay with this. Doubt began to occur again but this time at a far deeper level.

That second round of doubt was more like the doubt I knew as a teen, more akin to wonderment and curiosity than fearfulness of getting it wrong. It was a far more comfortable way to meet God than from a position of incredulity towards religion. I still wasn’t immediately and completely ensconced in comfortable belief, but doubt about the truth and usefulness of atheism had led me back to my philosophical studies, which this time originated in classical philosophy. A-ha moments were numerous and as I deeply and thoroughly studied the classical tradition. The readings became increasingly more difficult, my hours studying and thinking and writing longer and my heart and mind ever more inclined to ideas that support theistic belief. I don’t believe I could have healed as fully or found such depth of meaning in my life and studies if I had chosen unquestioning atheism over doubt-filled Christianity. Bacon, in the same essay quoted above, seems to have had similar feelings: “Therefore, as atheism is in all respects hateful, so in this, that it depriveth human nature of the means to exalt itself above human frailty.”

All this took place against the backdrop of my new diagnosis and a new awareness of my deep vulnerability. I also had not forgotten Amazing Grace and that dark night of the soul. Doubt took me away from God, but doubt, albeit of deeper and more nourished variety, also brought me back. I was 21, but at the same place I began at 12 — only this time, my questions were nourished well with wisdom from professors, family, peers, and a doubt-friendly new pastor at a far more theologically, racially, and economically diverse church. It was clear to me that there was room for me in the tent. It was also clear that dark days, difficulty, and of course doubt were not the opposite of faith as I had once assumed while still attending youth group; ultimately these experiences had caused my faith to blossom and thrive in loving curiosity.

Doubt in adolescence was for me a deep-sea diving expedition, doubting down to the very ocean floor perilously close to complete darkness and then doubting the darkness and swimming towards light and life nearer the surface. What I recovered on my dive? A pearl of wisdom: doubt is a gift from God. The treasure I found down there sustained me through a rediscovery of Christian belief, Baptist re-identification, my M.Div., ordination, three years of hospital chaplaincy, and now, days spent studying as a therapist-in-training. Bacon’s aphorism is my story of doubt and faith in a nutshell. Doubt is no enemy of Christ; it is the means for revealing the truth of God’s love in ordinary, sometimes painful, human experiences.


*Bacon's essay "Of Atheism" is free to read online here: http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/bacon/essays_contents.html)

Rev. Edgar Paul Herrington IV is a clinical therapist in training and has served as chaplain at three different hospitals in North Carolina and Kentucky, including Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, Norton Hospital in Louisville and Kosair Children's Hospital.

Paul received his BA in Philosophy at Bellarmine University in Louisville in 2008 and his M. Div at Wake Forest in 2011. He was ordained at Deer Park Baptist Church in 2012; in his personal life, his ministry, and his profession as a counselor, Paul hopes to develop his skills for connecting with people and inspiring joy, faith, and facilitating an environment to speak freely.